Portland native narrowly misses bullet during Watertown gun battle

A Portland native narrowly missed being hit by a bullet when police in Massachusetts opened fire on the first suspect from the Boston Marathon bombings.

Kristian Tuinzing was inside a closet at his home in Watertown early this morning when he heard several explosions and hundreds of gunshots outside his window, his father told FOX 12. One of the bullets came through a football calendar that was hanging on his wall.

Kristian's father, Reinier, was in California on a business trip when he got the call from his son at around 10:30 p.m. Pacific time on Thursday night. Reinier told FOX 12 outside of his Portland home that when he saw his son calling at that time of the night, he instantly knew something was wrong.

"That was like 1:30 a.m. his time," Reinier Tuinzing said. "This was not going to be a good call."

Chaos was unfolding outside Kristian Tuinzing's window in Watertown. The massive search for one of the suspects from Monday's deadly marathon bombings was now centered on his street.

All Kristian Tuinzing could do was listen and describe the terror.

"He said he was in his closet, hunkered down, and there was a lot of shooting going out on the street," Reinier Tuinzing said. "That's a frightening thing to hear from a child."

Kristian Tuinzing tweeted that he heard about 500 gunshots in a matter of minutes.

During the shootout, something hit Kristian Tuinzing's window, his father said. A picture posted on Twitter shows where a bullet came through a calendar on his wall, hit a chair that he had been sitting in moments before, then landed on his floor.

"He literally dodged a bullet. And that was very frightening for me to hear that it was that close," Reinier Tuinzing said.

That close call came less than four days after Kristian took the day off from work to watch his cousin run the Boston Marathon. Luckily, she finished about 30 to 45 minutes before the blasts near the finish line, Reinier Tuinzing said.